1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a transfer member for electrophotography to be used in an image forming apparatus of an electrophotographic system (hereinafter referred to as “electrophotographic apparatus”) such as a copying machine or a printer, and to an electrophotographic apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an electrophotographic apparatus, an electrostatic image-bearing member formed of an inorganic or organic material is charged, and the charged electrostatic image-bearing member is exposed to form an electrostatic latent image. After that, the electrostatic latent image is developed with triboelectrically charged toner, and the toner image is transferred onto a recording medium such as paper, followed by fixation of the toner image onto the recording medium. Thus, a desired image is formed on the recording medium.
As a transfer system of the electrophotographic apparatus, there has been used an intermediate transfer system in which an unfixed toner image on the electrostatic image-bearing member is primarily transferred onto an intermediate transfer member, and further, the unfixed toner image is secondarily transferred from the intermediate transfer member onto the recording medium. Such intermediate transfer system has the following advantage particularly in a color electrophotographic apparatus: a high-quality image is obtained with little influences of a thickness and surface characteristics of the recording medium because toners of four colors (yellow, magenta, cyan, and black) are sequentially transferred onto the intermediate transfer member and the resultant superimposed image is collectively transferred onto the recording medium. In order to realize a higher image quality in the intermediate transfer system, it is important to enhance toner releasability of a surface of the intermediate transfer member, to thereby improve the transfer of the toner image onto the recording medium.
In Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-192901, there is a disclosure of a conductive endless belt to be suitably used as an intermediate transfer belt capable of effectively improving the efficiency of the transfer onto the recording medium. That is, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-192901, there is a disclosure of a conductive endless belt having a hard coat layer that is formed through the use of a perfluoroalkyl group-containing UV-curable resin and that has a pencil hardness of 4H or more and a contact angle with n-dodecane of 20° or more.